Using Powerpoint with Video Backgrounds

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Summary: Microsoft Powerpoint is not a good solution for using motion backgrounds across multiple slides. Text over video only works in PPT 2010, but when you change slides, the video will restart from the beginning, or in some cases will appear on top of the text. I recommend checking out one of the excellent worship presentation software options listed in the sidebar of this website.

Thank you so much! I struggled for an hour fiddling with PowerPoint 2013 and losing my way in Microsoft’s so-called “Help” and couldn’t get the video to stay in the background. Using your instructions made it happen.

WOW! That is crazy, but I will try it. Last week, our Pastor asked me to put text over a video background. We are a small country church and PowerPoint has been fine for all our needs thus far. Thank you so much for the help!

While I agree that a worship presentation software is a great alternative, I know that not all churches have a budget for this software. There are several alternatives which can be looked into, which are free open source software.

The software which I have used include dreambeam, lyricue (Linux only), and Screen Monkey (www.screenmonkey.org). Screen Monkey is the one I like best. It is especially good if the user can get their head around layers being separately controlled. Layer one goes to the back, layer four to the front, and the other two in between. Every clip you put up is assigned to a layer, and layers can be changed independently.

Each layer can be faded in and out independently. And no matter where on the tableau a clip is placed, the program keeps track of which clip is next.

This explanation is not the greatest, but if a person will experiment with the program, they will quickly get the hang of it.

Dear brother Joshiah,
Thanks for a great presentation on the PowerPoint idea of texto over video. Microsoft should improve that feature in the next release of PowerPoint. It was, however, very interesting to see you work around the obstacles. I hope you will produce some more tutorials like this in the future.
Blessings to you and your family.
Ruben

I prepare my PP presentation on my personal pc then download it to a drive which I carry to church to use. Right now I’m working on a presentation where I just need motions – no words; but when I downloaded it, I found that the motions came up as pictures with no motion. What’s the deal?

Could you prepare a tutorial or a forum to discuss the in’s and outs of the various presentation software available. I’ve tried Easy Worship a little but when I added motions into my trial presentations, I ended up with a blank white screen. I finally gave up because the week to week is quite demanding in meeting my presentation schedules…

Hi Linda – did you set the video to “play automatically” and “loop until stopped?” I address that in the tutorial at 4:08. You’d have to talk with Easy Worship support about the other issue – they’re usually very helpful. I would like to do some more tutorials on using the different software programs when I have time – for the moment, I’m sure there are many on YouTube and the software developers’ websites.

Thank you for your comments. After I posted my question, I did some further research to see if I could solve the problem. I learned that the motion is not actually saved to the PP presentation only the link (or pathway). So create a folder for the presentation and the motions that are to be used within the presentation. Then insert the motion into the presentation. Save the presentation within the same folder. Move the folder to the transportable drive. This preserves the pathway to the motion and the problem is solved. Hope this helps other users….

Our entire service is done in PowerPoint and the sanctuary computer is 2003. I would like to insert a one-slide moving video background with text on top. Could I create the moving video slide on my 2010 at home and save it as a PowerPoint Show, then insert it into my larger PPT and view it in the sanctuary on the PPT 2003?

If you’re saving the presentation and WON’T be editing it during service or worship ect. try saving it in WMV format, this is possible in Office 2010. This will create it into a movie that can be played basically in any presentation software! (as far as I’m aware) Just be advised; because it’s in video format you CANNOT edit it after it’s save, unless your using a video editor. There’s also ALOT of little tricks/kinks in putting a video as background, I’ve learned most of them the hard way so feel free to shoot me an email if you got questions! Blessings!
(todieisgain@live.com)